France’s new prime minister drops a plan to scrap two public holidays, opening talks with the left while employers threaten mass mobilization if taxes rise.

Paris

Sébastien Lecornu has not been in the Hôtel Matignon a week, and already his first clear signal is aimed at the left. On Saturday, in his debut interview round with France’s regional press, the 39‑year‑old prime minister said he would abandon the most incendiary idea inherited from his short‑lived predecessor François Bayrou: eliminating two public holidays to eke out productivity gains and narrow the deficit. In Italy, the headline almost writes itself — “Non tocco i due festivi,” hands off the two holidays.

“I have decided to withdraw the removal of two public holidays,” Lecornu said — a terse phrase that instantly re‑set the political tone of the 2026 budget season and offered a first olive branch to unions and the “republican left” he is courting in parliament. The move follows a bruising week in which Fitch Ratings cut France’s sovereign credit score to A+, the country’s lowest on record at a major agency, citing mounting debt and political instability. The signal from Matignon: reset the conversation, reduce social friction, and try to build a cross‑bench path for a budget that can pass without fresh turmoil.

A fast pivot after a fast fall

The public‑holiday gambit was part of Bayrou’s 2026 consolidation plan, a sweeping package built around roughly €44 billion in savings and revenue measures. It never got the chance to bite. Bayrou’s government collapsed in a confidence vote this week, and President Emmanuel Macron tapped Lecornu — his loyal defense minister and a Gaullist by formation — to try again. The new premier inherits a fractured National Assembly and a jittery bond market, but, for now, he is framing his method as “neither instability nor immobilism”: lots of consultation with parties and social partners, fewer shock‑therapy measures that inflame the streets.

Symbolically, the holiday reversal matters more than its arithmetic. No one seriously believes two extra working days would fix France’s structural deficit, but they had become a shorthand for technocratic austerity imposed from above. By removing the tripwire, Lecornu buys space to negotiate on the terrain where the left wanted the fight all along: who pays, and how much.

Wooing the “republican left,” isolating the Insoumis

The new prime minister has been explicit about the political map he hopes to redraw. He wants to work with the Socialists, Greens and Communists — what he calls the “republican left” — while freezing out Jean‑Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, which he portrays as preferring agitation to legislation. For union leaders, the holiday U‑turn is a “first victory and a “first good news” (CFDT), but it is not a deal in itself. Their next asks are familiar: protect purchasing power, invest in public services, and avoid across‑the‑board cuts that would again land on wage earners.

In that conversation, taxes on wealth and capital are back at the center. Economists close to the left are pushing the idea of a minimum annual levy on billionaires’ wealth, in line with the proposal promoted by Gabriel Zucman on the international stage. Lecornu, for his part, has hinted he is open to “discussing high‑wealth taxation” while drawing a red line around “professional assets” — the productive capital inside companies that he says should be treated with caution. It is a lawyerly posture that leaves him room to float a compromise: some form of targeted contribution at the top, calibrated to avoid penalizing investment. Whether that thread can stitch a majority together is the question that will define his first budget.

Business pushes back — loudly

If Lecornu’s first gesture tilts left, the backlash from business came within hours. Patrick Martin, head of the employers’ federation Medef, warned of a “major employers’ mobilization” should corporate taxes be hiked to plug the budget hole. Company leaders, he argued, are already absorbing higher borrowing costs and energy bills, and any new levy would freeze investment and hiring. The threat is not idle: in the past two years France has seen business groups coordinate with sector federations to weigh on fiscal debates, and the tone this autumn is sharper, framed by the rating downgrade and the fear that the political calendar to 2027 will lock in stop‑go policymaking. The government’s counter‑argument is that the burden must be shared and targeted. France has already promised to complete the phase‑out of production taxes that industry despises,
but the deficit trajectory has deteriorated, and the bond market is less forgiving. In the coming days, Bercy and Matignon will quietly test hybrid options: a time‑limited solidarity contribution on exceptional profits, a minimum effective rate for the very largest groups, or a revamped wealth‑tax instrument that exempts business assets. Each of those has a constituency — and a veto player. To pass anything, Lecornu needs both political arithmetic and social armistice.

The downgrade that haunts every meeting

The Fitch cut, from AA‑ to A+, is more than a symbolic bruise. It raises the price of refinancing just as the state needs to borrow heavily, and it adds a new layer of scrutiny from investors who normally treat French OATs as a euro‑area safe asset. Unusually, several blue‑chip French companies now borrow at yields below the sovereign — an inversion that flatters corporate treasurers but underscores the market’s doubts about Paris’s capacity to execute a medium‑term plan.
Inside ministries, officials describe a pervasive sense of the clock ticking: every concession now must be squared with a debt‑stabilization path that rating agencies view as credible.

That is why Lecornu’s rhetorical triangulation matters. He cannot alienate the center‑right and pro‑business blocs he also needs in the Assembly, but his minority cannot afford another cycle of social explosions either. Cutting public holidays would have united his opponents for little fiscal gain; retreating from the idea costs him little with moderates and buys him a hearing with potential partners on the left.

What comes next

The immediate calendar is unforgiving. Within days, the new cabinet must be named; within weeks, the draft 2026 budget must be tabled; within months, it must clear parliament.
All of that will unfold with an RN caucus eager to vote opportunistically, a left divided between negotiation and protest, and a presidential majority that is fifth‑prime‑minister‑in‑two‑years exhausted.
Lecornu says he will privilege dialogue and keep Article 49.3 — the constitutional tool to push a budget through without a vote — for last resort. Everyone has heard that before. What is new is the starting gesture: no shock to cherished rituals, a signal to the left that the door is open, and to business that the bargaining starts now.

If the strategy works, the first fifty days will look like a sequence of small‑bore compromises that add up to a passable budget. If it doesn’t, the holidays he refused to touch may be the only quiet days this autumn.

Reporting based on interviews and statements carried by regional French dailies and wire services on September 13–14, 2025; ratings data and market reactions as of September 12–14, 2025.

Sources (September 12–14, 2025):

• Reuters reporting on Lecornu’s public‑holiday reversal (Sept. 13, 2025).

• BFMTV/TV5Monde coverage of Medef’s warning and union reactions (Sept. 13–14, 2025).

• Fitch downgrade and market coverage in Bloomberg, The Guardian and Le Monde (Sept. 12–13, 2025).